Our Methodology

Three federal data programs sit underneath every page on the site. First, the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) publishes annual DRG-level payment data for every Medicare-participating hospital — average covered charges, average total payments, and average Medicare payments per diagnosis-related group. This is the source for every “average payment” figure on the site.

Second, the CMS Hospital Compare (Care Compare) program publishes risk-adjusted quality measures: 30-day mortality, 30-day readmission, hospital-acquired conditions, HCAHPS patient-experience scores, timely & effective care indicators, and the overall hospital star rating. These feed both the Value Score quality factor and the cohort summaries on each ranking page.

Third, the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule requires every hospital to publish machine-readable files of standard charges including negotiated rates, cash-pay rates, and the chargemaster. We cross-reference these files where applicable, but compliance has been uneven so we treat them as supplementary rather than primary.

For all-payer context, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) publishes the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), the Patient Safety Indicators, and the Inpatient Quality Indicators. These help calibrate Medicare-only averages against the broader US hospital population.

Every reporting hospital receives a Value Score on a 0-100 scale that maps to an A-F band. The score combines three factors with explicit weights:

• Price Competitiveness, 40%. Average Medicare total payment for the hospital's reported procedures versus the national mean. Higher-than-average payments score lower; lower-than-average payments score higher. This factor inverts so that lower price equals higher score.
• Quality Outcomes, 40%. CMS Hospital Compare star rating (1-5) mapped to 0-100. Hospitals with no published star rating are treated as a neutral 50 rather than penalized.
• Outcome / Complication, 20%. Composite of mortality, readmission, and patient-safety domain performance from CMS Hospital Compare. Lower complication rates produce higher scores.

Score-to-grade bands: A = 80-100, B = 65-79, C = 50-64, D = 35-49, F = below 35. The bands are absolute, not curve-graded — there is no quota for any letter.

The headline insight: an expensive hospital with excellent outcomes can score higher than a cheap hospital with poor outcomes. Value is outcome per dollar, not the cheapest option.

We download Medicare IPPS files directly from data.cms.gov, cross-reference each provider against the CMS Hospital Compare measures release, and normalize prices by DRG to enable apples-to-apples comparisons. Geographic adjustments use the CMS-published wage index so that a hospital in a high-wage labor market is not penalized as “expensive” for following federal payment rules.

Procedure aggregations (by category, by state) are computed once at build time so every page renders from a static dataset. Pages are statically generated under Next.js export — there are no runtime API calls and no personalization.

Medicare IPPS data publishes annually for the prior federal fiscal year, typically in late summer. CMS Hospital Compare measures refresh quarterly. Hospital price-transparency files refresh on rolling cadences set by each hospital — some monthly, most annually. We rebuild the dataset whenever a new CMS release arrives. Every page on the site is timestamped at the bottom with the most recent dataset refresh.

• Chargemaster list prices are not what most patients pay. Privately insured patients pay their plan's negotiated rate; uninsured patients pay either the hospital's cash-pay rate or a financial-assistance-adjusted figure.
• Medicare IPPS data only reflects Medicare-paid discharges. Privately insured patient pricing can differ materially.
• Quality measures are risk-adjusted, but residual confounding by patient mix is real. Hospitals serving sicker populations can underperform on raw measures even when their care is high quality.
• Many hospitals remain partially non-compliant with the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule, limiting our ability to compare negotiated rates uniformly.
• The Value Score is editorial — a HospitalCostData composite. It is not a CMS, HHS, or AHRQ designation.
• Specialty hospitals (children's, psychiatric, rehabilitation, long-term care) are paid under different prospective payment systems and report different quality measure sets. Direct comparisons against general acute-care facilities can mislead.

HospitalCostData is informational only. We do not recommend specific hospitals, predict clinical outcomes, or provide medical, legal, or financial advice. Hospital pricing and quality data are aggregated from public CMS sources to help patients understand benchmarks before a planned procedure or after an unexpected bill — never as a stand-alone basis for clinical or financial decisions. Always consult a licensed physician for care decisions and a qualified advisor for financial questions.

For surprise out-of-network billing protections, see the federal No Surprises Act resource page at cms.gov/nosurprises.

If you use data from HospitalCostData, please cite:

HospitalCostData. “[Hospital Name] Pricing Data.” hospitalcostdata.com, 2026. Accessed [date].

Underlying data is sourced from CMS Medicare programs and is in the public domain.